


here comes a greek tragedy

by nuest95s



Category: Wanna One (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Fantasy, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Minor Angst, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn, True Love's Kiss, hijinks ensue, minhyun is cursed, ong is a witch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-12
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-07-29 09:54:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16261796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nuest95s/pseuds/nuest95s
Summary: If you love something, set it free.If Seongwoo knew how, he thinks he would—hopes he would. But it’s moments like this that make him think that if he knew how to cure Minhyun, he’d light the spell on fire and scatter the ashes across the world, farther than the heavens could reach, just so that he’d stay.





	here comes a greek tragedy

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: minhyun the human is cursed and seongwu the subpar witch tries to undo the curse (and continuously fails)
> 
> i had a lot of fun with this :) i'm not entirely sure whether it came out any good but i hope prompter + rest of u like it :D
> 
> work title from greek tragedy by the wombats
> 
> a little note abt minhyun's curse, although its gone into more depth in the fic: he sings when he speaks, so he just doesn't speak at all!

        It’s not as if it’s about the curse. A lot of people are cursed—doing the witch circuit has convinced Minhyun of that, if he hadn’t suspected already. But most of those people _earned_ the curse in some way, had some divine power or jilted ex out for vengeance. It was very simple cause and effect—they hurt, and were hurt.

        And it’s not like Minhyun wants to have hurt someone, not like he’s _malicious_ or something, because he’s _not._ He’s not. It’s just that—he figures if he’s to be cursed, it should be on his terms. Should’ve been. He’s getting tired of sullenly copying down the same words— _collateral damage—_ when the receptionists hand him the sign in form.

        It’s been a long time since Minhyun’s called up his mother and complained about it, complained about her single, stupid decision—been a long time since he’s been able to. But he still searches, because he’s twenty-four now, and maybe it’s just the words that he can’t say choking him up and shredding his patience, but he wants to start _living._

        The place he’s going to now is the last in this city—he’d actually been searching for his train tickets when he’d found the reference to them, buried under coffee stained water bills and letters from friends he hasn’t seen in years. _Ong Herbal Remedies and etc._ He smiles, wonders how often it is that they get a case of _etc._

        It’s not a quaint little place sandwiched between candle shops, like he’s used to, or a shack surreptitiously hidden at the top of a high rise. He squints up at the beige apartment building, then down at his phone. The address fits, but nothing else does.

        He takes the steps two at a time and thinks about the rest of the information his mother’s friend’s friend had copied down on the napkin. _Oh, I’m so sorry for the loss,_ they’d whispered with genuine discomfort, black ink spilling out against the white paper. _You know, Sunghyun had always told me she was such a kind, uh, woman._

        Minhyun had taken the napkin and wished them a good afternoon and promptly ordered an iced americano. His mother had been an asshole—hence the curse. Insincerity didn’t look good on people, he’d noticed, more so when they weren’t accustomed to it.

        Apparently, the business is run by an old witch with a penchant for floral arrangements and hexing people who dislikes cats. Accordingly, he’s come armed with a sweater his cousin’s cat had attacked a couple months before and a bouquet of tulips.

        Her grandson hangs around sometimes too, working as a receptionist more than anything, and Minhyun really wouldn’t have known that—shouldn’t have—but it’d come to his attention that his grandmother has a penchant for hexing people that bother him, too, which is far more common than the first type of hex, if only because he “has a face carved from marble and meant to be placed in a museum”. The friend’s words, not his.

        The fourth floor is remarkably drab, and he only finds the witch’s home because of the spilled rose petals littered near the door and the worn sign hung on a rusting nail. Letters have disappeared from age; the sign reads out _O Hbal dies n tc._

        His phone buzzes. His sister, probably, asking if he’s still fucking cursed and whether he’s going to get that checked out one of these days. He doesn’t bother to look, and knocks instead.

        “Coming!” The voice that answers is deeper than he’d expected and more anxious than he’d expected, all the letters pressed up against each other like they’d been waiting for him.

        Minhyun waits patiently. His phone buzzes again, and he turns it off without opening the messages.

        The door swings open, and he unconsciously takes a step back. Something’s flying in the background, and the figure panting in the doorway pulls something out of their pocket and hurls it behind them. There’s a squeal of pain and the sound dies shortly after.

        The slender, harried figure leans against the doorway and takes him in, voice hoarse but soft when he speaks. “We’re, um, out of the lavender foot scrub if you’re here for that. Can I help you with anything else?”

        Minhyun doesn’t entirely understand the reasons behind it, but the witch community is painfully behind on nearly every aspect of modern life, from microwaves to the internet. When it comes to sign language, it’s nearly obsolete—they have other ways of communicating, magical ways. It’s safe to say he doesn’t understand that either. He pulls a small whiteboard and a dry erase marker out of his coat and scrawls an answer on it before holding it up. _I have a curse. Someone told me Ong Yujin could help._

        The man scrapes a glance across him and then considers the words, shifting on the hardwood. Even now, when there’s nothing but silence and faint, muffled sunlight desaturates everything but them, a frantic energy animates him. He coughs something that could pass for a sigh or a laugh. “Well, she’s dead. I’ll see what I can do to help, though.” He stretches out a hand behind himself to root for something on a cluttered side table, coming up with a clipboard and pen. “Fill this out while I, uh—tidy up.”

        The door slams shut. Minhyun glances down at the familiar sheet. Nothing else about this feels familiar—the building, the darkness, the man _. A face carved from marble and meant to be placed in a museum._ He can see it. He’s cut like a Greek hero, or the glory that they died for.

        He hefts the pen in his hand and, after a few uncertain moments, begins to fill in the paper. _Cause of affliction?_ Minhyun taps the point of it against the sheet, blue black spots scattered across the blank. He’d meant to write ‘collateral damage’, and stares at the brief betrayal with grudging agreement. _A mistake._

        The door swings back open, almost slamming against the opposite wall. The man pokes his head back out, and the rest of him follows after. A lock of hair that, possibly, had been tucked behind his ear earlier is now sticking straight up. Minhyun looks away, and then back, and then away.

        “Are you done with the form?” he asks. His voice is less hoarse, but still soft, little more than a murmur even though there is no one around to hear them. The man clears his throat, and he realizes he’s still standing there, unmoving. He flinches and holds out the clipboard.

        The man scans the sheet, glancing back up at him a couple times before dropping it to his side and coughing into one elbow. He flicks his eyes up again, almost a tick, and slips a lemon cough drop out of his pocket. He unwraps it with two fingers and watches him. “So, uh,” he pops it in his mouth. “The truth of the matter is that I’m not Ong Yujin.”

        Minhyun almost signs to tell him that he knows, before rolling his eyes and pulling out the whiteboard again, writing the characters carefully. The man gives a breathy, sarcastic laugh. It’s the loudest thing Minhyun’s heard from him.

        “Yeah, I guess that’s kind of obvious. But, um, what I mean is that I have, like, nowhere close to her level of expertise with this sort of thing. She taught me a little, before…” he trails off for a bit. Minhyun leaves him be; in his unfocused gaze, he sees himself, buying petunias for his mother’s garden and then burning them with her old cigarette lighter one by one on the lawn at dawn.

        The man catches himself and frowns, rubbing at his temples. “I can try my best to help with what you’re going through—whatever that is, you should tell me when—if—we do this—but. I’m not guaranteeing anything. I really can’t.” His frown curves a little sharper at the last word, something like disappointment dragging over his expression and disappearing in the next second.

        But Minhyun’s used to dead ends. He doesn’t think the other man could possibly understand how accustomed he is to them—to the weary tilt of a witch’s halfhearted smile when they tell him that whoever had cursed him had known something that, frankly, they’d refused to share with the world. They’d pulled something unformed and malicious out of their own magic and simply dropped it in a five-year-old’s larynx.

        He shrugs. After nineteen years, he’s almost used to the inability to speak the way he wants to—the ability to put words into words. But he thinks that even if he could speak normally, he wouldn’t be able to explain this. He erases the board with the back of his marker stained hand and scrawls, _I’ll take anything you can give._

        The man frowns at the wording of it—there’s a desperation in those words Minhyun’s stopped bothering to display in his expression. But he nods after a bit, focused in a strange, attractive way. All that barbed, opalescent energy finding a purpose. He looks back up at him, and Minhyun is relieved, momentarily, that his grandmother is not here to hex him.

        “It’s not much, but I _can_ give,” he finally says, before nudging the door back open and disappearing into the apartment. Minhyun hovers for a second more in the hallway and then follows him in.

        It’s exactly what he expected, and nothing like it, the beautiful bastard child of the man’s bright, jagged light and every witch he’s ever been let down by. There are stacks balanced on the edges of pieces of furniture, alternating volumes on herbal remedies, witchcraft, and music theory. He catches sight of a couple trashy fantasy titles too.

        Minhyun finally takes a tentative seat on a piece of uncluttered floor and places the tulips beside him. He doubts the man will even be able to find them after he leaves. Two inches from him, a half empty mug of something that smells terrible and looks like the remains of a child’s gardening project is settled against the side of the couch.

        The man reenters the room, arms full of completely unrelated things—wire cutters; a glass of orange juice; a box with spell books or cookbooks or possibly both. He places them gently in the least messy places of the room, which is to say that they’re in wildly different spots. He takes a seat beside Minhyun and takes a meditative sip of his orange juice before glancing up and across his face again. “Okay, you’d better explain the curse. Or write it out, I guess. Can’t do anything until I know what I’m working with. Did they steal your voice, or something? Ariel kind of deal?”

        His mouth almost twists in a wry smile. His Prince Eric is far, far away. Minhyun exhales slowly, and drags the marker across the board in familiar, slanting lines. _It’s not that I can’t speak. But when I do, it comes out as song._

        The man blinks at him, startled. Despite that, he can see the beginnings of gears turning in his head, turning magic into matter. He rubs his thumb across the rim of the glass. “What do you mean? Like, do you have the Top 40s at your lips all the time? Is there an update system? Or is it just songs you listen to?”

        Minhyun presses his lips into a very thin line and erases the words before trying again. _I say whatever I really meant to say, but I’m singing it._

        “So your life is a musical?” The man asks, taking another sip. Resignation curls its way around Minhyun’s heart. He shrugs, aggressively, because he knows that this is the closest he’s probably going to get. His expression slides into something sly. “Sing a few bars for me?”

        Minhyun glances over at him, withering, and he laughs. It is definitely the loudest sound he’s heard for him, bright and unconcerned with itself altogether. He tilts his head, and Minhyun can almost see the next question coming. “How’d it happen?”

 _Collateral damage_ is not enough. _A mistake_ is not enough. He writes, _My mother bragged that I have the most beautiful voice in the world, and pissed off an old, conceited rival. Thus, this._

        The next question comes the same way, an outline of dread and then the reality of it. “So where’s your mom now? If she’s part of the cause, she might be part of the cure.”

        Minhyun hesitates, and then writes, _Dead._ The man stiffens, and then relaxes. There is nothing easy about reading the planes of something so ephemeral, and after a moment, what little there was to take apart is gone.

        He doesn’t say, _I’m sorry._ He says, “I’ve never heard of turning a voice into song before, but I can try to tweak an old potion my grandma knew and see if that works. The, uh, recipe’s in the closet, though, so—”

        He leaves, just as quickly as he’d made his way in. Minhyun can’t help but think that life feels faster and warmer and far more real around him, turning dry monochrome to something vibrant and uncertain. He barely remembers anything that’s happened since he knocked on the door, but it doesn’t feel like an issue, somehow.

        The man comes back in and acknowledges him with a quick, sloppy nod before lighting something on fire in the corner. Minhyun startles before realizing it’s a stove—or what passes as one. A pot hovers precariously over it. The man frowns, offended, at the curtains spread across the windows and snaps his fingers. They don’t move, and he snaps his fingers again, a sharper, more annoyed sound. Light floods the room, and Minhyun looks away.

        “I’m thankful for the company, by the way,” the man begins to ramble, pulling leaves off a branch and breaking them into smaller pieces before dropping them into the pot. “It gets a little strange in here, even without the usual nuts looking for the normal herbal remedies. Which I’m also terrible at making. I think it’s the air, more than anything, more than her stuff lying around. People die, but magic doesn’t, you know? It’s, uh, pervasive. Hangs like fog, like this intangible, heavy ache.” He pauses, leaves one hand on the ladle and uses the other hand to wave around himself absentmindedly. “Everything here’s thick with her magic. I should probably move on, really, but.” He shrugs again and returns to the pot.

        Minhyun doesn’t want to say something, or write it—doesn’t think he could, really—but doesn’t think the other man really cares whether he does anyway. A tension eases in his chest, but only slightly.

        He stops abruptly, only clear because he has never—not since the moment he’d opened the door—been still before. He frowns, a strangely juvenile expression on him. “Shit. We ran out of hellebore.” He turns to Minhyun, offers an apologetic sound somewhere between a sigh and a groan and a laugh. “Sorry for taking up all your time. I’ll be right back, just—don’t let this burn, will you?”

        Minhyun raises his eyebrows and wipes furiously at his board. _How will I know if it’s burning?_

        “Smoke?”

_It’s already smoking._

        He grins, sheepish. “Bad smoke? If it turns purple, that’s probably a bad sign.”

        And then he’s gone, and Minhyun’s left with a steaming, smoking, crackling pot of a viscous liquid the color of apricots, until the next moment it’s changed to a bluer color, and then to a milky green. But not purple. Not yet.

        He stares at the potion, and thinks about how every single thing he had expected to happen had not happened, and about how he likes the way magic hangs heavy in this air, all anise and flat soda, and about how the man’s hair is still sticking up in places, and about how he’d like to fix it, like to always fix it.

        He doesn’t know his _name_ . It reeks of a reckless, joy-bright kind of disaster. _I don’t know his_ name, he thinks. _This is a bit of a problem,_ he thinks.

        The man ducks back into the room, as animated as ever—as alluring as ever. _I would take a curse for him,_ he thinks, and feels like perhaps this is the most dangerous thought he’s had yet.

        He hovers in front of the pot, holding up the hellebore, and Minhyun lingers for a moment, lost in himself, before moving aside quickly. When he finishes with the potion, he fiddles with the switch until the flame goes out and barely waits for the potion to cool before pouring it into a glass vial which, even to someone who’d barely passed high school chemistry, is fairly frightening. He swishes it from side to side, and his mouth quirks reluctantly to one side in grudging acceptance that it’s as close to done as it’ll ever be.

        They walk to the door silently—it’s not a far walk, but it feels like one, even when the rest of the time Minhyun’s spent here has compressed down into a single feeling, a single thought.

        Minhyun slips through the half open door—the man watches him on the other side, lips pressed together with a confession, or an apology. He thrusts the potion out, and the anxiety melts from his frame. Minhyun takes it, as he shifts to lean against the side of the doorjamb and plays with a frayed thread on his sweater. “I hope that works.”

        He inclines his head in what he hopes conveys, _I hope so too._

        If he understands, he shows no sign of it, but his mouth twitches up and to the side. “I’m Seongwoo, by the way. Ong Seongwoo, but you probably already—” he breaks off and nods at the graying sign. “I’ll stop. I should stop. I, uh, I will see you around. Or not see you around. Since you will hopefully get cured and not need to see me around. I’m closing the door now.”

        He closes the door. Minhyun stares at the potion for a few seconds, before tucking it in his coat and taking the steps down one at a time.

        The potion’s not going to work, he knows that—but he’s going to come back anyway. He’s not sure what part of that sentence scares him more.

    

…

 

        Seongwoo closes the door and very slowly backs up into the couch. Papers crinkle against him, and he sweeps them aside gently before sinking into the ripped, stained upholstery.

        He’s never been interested in witchcraft. Ever. When his parents died, when his grandmother took him in, he found her warmhearted and strict and designated her as the most important part of his life. So it’s not that he doesn’t—didn’t—respect her. But to say that he ever found any part of her career interesting is a stretch, to say the least. He met some cute guys, some cute girls, broke a few dangerous vials. It was all good life experience, probably. This, though. This was never part of the plan.

        But it’s in the plan now, and he refuses to throw any of this old, possibly lethal, shit out, and also refuses to learn anything beyond basic self defense spells, and maybe that is a problem. Minhyun’s face had briefly made him want to learn something beyond basic self defense spells—far, far beyond anything that could be called basic, because whoever cursed him could’ve obliterated every spell book author that he knows of—and maybe that too is a problem.

        Fading sunlight filters through the windows, thinning into something watery and fragile as the sun goes down. Seongwoo watches the city fall asleep through the dirty windows and toes a pile of spell books near his abandoned cauldron.

        He doesn’t know anything—he knows that. Minhyun knows that. Hell, his grandma’s probably turning over in her grave right now, full of years of that knowledge. And there’s no real reason—no substantial, rational reason—why he should open Potions for Preschoolers and sell his soul to it.

        Seongwoo rubs his eyes, sighs, and closes the curtains. It’s going to be a long night.

 

…

 

        Minhyun toys with the vial on the way home—if where he’s living can even be called that. It’s bubbly and multicolored and reminds him strangely of the man—of Seongwoo. He brings it to his nose for a second, probing, and dodges a minivan. It smells strongly of unripe berries and dirt. A voice in his head says, _Why on Earth would you drink that?_ Another voice provides a buzzing sound, and he tips it back as he turns the corner onto his street. Surprisingly, it tastes exactly how it smells.

        He waits for a few seconds to check for results, whispers a few words to himself—all high pitched and grating. He frowns at the vial and tucks it back in his coat. He hadn’t expected much, but hope never dies.

        The small, cramped room he’d rented in the inn is as messy as he’s ever let it get. A single stack of papers is discarded on the counter; a closed takeout box sandwiched between two bags. His letter of resignation dangles over the edge of the couch, and he stares at it for a few seconds, meditative and incredulous at his own recklessness. Then he tugs his mother’s old cigarette lighter out of his pocket and plucks the letter off the couch and watches himself walk to the kitchen.

        The ashes are dark against the white sink, and the air is thick with smoke and magic, but a different kind than Seongwoo’s, erratic and pearlescent. This is raw and unknown and powerful in its uncertainty, and Minhyun’s never stayed anywhere for more than handful of months—never looked back after the train ticket, not even at the station.

        He turns on the tap and watches it run black, gray, clear, and places the empty vial beside the faucet. It glitters in the dim light, incongruent with the spartan minimalism of his room. When he falls asleep that night, he’s still thinking about it, about bitter earth and soft light in a narrow corridor.

        The next day, he goes to work and pretends he hadn’t considered yesterday his last day. Jaehwan buys him a caramel macchiato and he pours it surreptitiously into the bin beside the creamer packets. Mostly, he thinks about Seongwoo. About the lock of hair sticking out of the side of his head, like he’s a cartoon character. About the half finished homework on his coffee table. About his hesitant smile, quirking off to the side and wavering before it sticks.

        It can’t really go beyond this, beyond brief daydreams pressed between professional emails and smoke breaks. He doesn’t smoke, but the smell reminds him of his mother, so he watches Minki blow cigarette smoke into the street and cackle at unsuspecting pedestrians when he drops small pieces of gravel from the ledge. And even then, he’s still thinking about Seongwoo.

        It’s not that he’s unattractive—he thinks they’re both decent looking people. But there’s only so many potions he can take before it becomes apparent to both of them that there’s nothing else to be done. It’s a specific kind of ache that comes when they tell him sorry, refer him to a second cousin twice removed two cities over. He doesn’t fear it, but it’s hard enough without the sharp, dragging bite of heartbreak.

        Nevertheless, he walks over after work ends. A grease stained brown paper bag of left over Danishes from the break room fridge accompanies him. Payment, since he’d forgotten the last time.

        He takes the steps two at a time and presses a hand to the inside pocket of his coat to make sure the vial’s still there. He hovers a moment before the door—apprehension washes over him, sudden and unrelenting. There’s no real, substantial reason why Seongwoo would even want him to come back.

        But he’s already here—he’s already burned the letter. He raises a hand to knock, and the door swings open from the inside. His fingers hang in the air, and he pulls them to his side.

        Seongwoo looks like he got dressed in the dark. His faded red hoodie is inside out, and a thick blue scarf obscures the bottom half of his face. He balks at the sight of Minhyun, backs up into an already wilting light fixture.

        “Hi,” he squeaks. Minhyun waves cheerily and pulls out the empty vial, draws a line across his throat with a finger. Seongwoo deflates and takes the vial from him. “I didn’t expect much, really, that was a pretty sloppily made potion, but.” He sighs again, but perks up. “I found a recipe that might work in this book under the kitchen sink. But—”

        He gestures down at himself. Minhyun arches an eyebrow and tugs out his board. _Ran out of feverfew?_

        Seongwoo snorts. “Milk, actually. I had cereal this morning, and it was just—a mess. Chunks everywhere.” He hesitates, for some reason unknown to Minhyun, and adds, “Wanna come with me? Beats sitting around in there. I broke the last two light bulbs, so it’s pitch black.”

        Minhyun peers around him, and finds the apartment painted in varying shades of black. He glances back at Seongwoo, who’s awaiting his reply with what can only be described as anxiety, and shrugs.

        He brightens and locks the door behind him. Minhyun stares at the hardwood and wonders how this has become his life.

        The walk over to the corner store is strange in a mundane way, strange because of how normal it seems. Minhyun hasn’t gone grocery shopping with someone else in a while—lately, he goes out for essentials at three in the morning when he can’t sleep and all the food’s gone bad. Even before that, his mother had handled it silently, always kept an eye out for his sweet tooth even when he hadn’t told her in half sung words what candy he liked.

        And grocery shopping with Seongwoo feels different, too. Loaded, maybe, but Minhyun thinks that perhaps Seongwoo isn’t used to this either. The idea calms him down a little, and he tunes back in to hear the other man finish off a rant on milk brands. That calms him down even more, and he frowns at himself.

        Seongwoo looks at him askance. “Something wrong? I’m sorry, I got a little carried off there, I know, but—they’re trying to rob the common people, you know.”

        He almost laughs—he wants to. But it’ll come off wrong, tilted melodic and twisted into song. He swallows the laugh and shakes his head, hoping his amusement shows in his expression.

        Seongwoo smiles, and drops a carton of his favorite milk—the _only_ milk, according to him—into the basket hanging from Minhyun’s wrist. He’s alive in an almost puerile way—he half expects him to skip through the aisles and pick up eggs and flour with the same vigor. But he only jogs to the cash register, makes casual conversation about herbal remedies with the elderly employee and persuades her to give him a discount on the milk.

        Minhyun’s smiling too, he knows. It feels like even after a hundred years, even in the dirt, even when everything about him is gone and only the outline of the magic trapped in his skin remains, this will live on. Happiness is like that, short lived and effulgent in its radiance and invariable in every other way.

        “Everything okay?” Seongwoo’s looking at him strangely, curiosity but brighter, warmer; unassuming and wholly familiar.

        He nods sharply, and they make their way back the same way. Minhyun watches him the entire way there, and pretends that he’s not going to come back tomorrow, and the day after. It doesn’t last long, the pretense, but for some reason, he’s not terribly torn up about it.

        When they get back, Seongwoo draws a symbol on him in green paste and goes on to make another potion. He’s different from before—more focused, less scattered. More confident, too, less like he’s mimicking someone’s actions and more like he’s following a well-worn routine. He tosses a shoe—he _thinks_ it’s a shoe—towards the couch, snaps his fingers absentmindedly to open the curtains, and even that is wound through with an uncharacteristic purpose, equal parts foreign and rhythmic.

        A yelp comes from the corner of the room, and he glances over and bites back a laugh. Plumes of smoke obscure Seongwoo’s expression, but it can’t be anything good. He can make out the shadowy outline of him—a shadowy outline that goes on to slam open the windows, goes on to scrub smoke and soot from his face. But he doesn’t quite do it properly, and soot stains his skin. Minhyun tries his best not to stare.

        Seongwoo glances over and grins, lopsided. He holds the same chaos as this cramped apartment does, the same untempered magic. Minhyun wonders, for a moment, what kind of magic he sees when he looks at him, if he sees any. A thin cobweb of something black and suffocating, possibly. Probably.

        “I’m almost done,” he says, pulling him out of his reverie. “Just a few more moments. Sorry, I know this isn’t the best way to spend your Friday night.”

        There are not enough words in the world to explain why he is wrong, so Minhyun doesn’t even try. Just watches the dregs of sunlight wash across the apartment and closes his eyes, imagines the smoke is coming from something else—someone else. And it works; he relaxes, for a moment.

        Seongwoo closes the windows, and he opens his eyes. He’s holding out a vial, rounder on the bottom and more bulbous. It carries a bright blue drink, liquid sapphire. He tilts it from side to side, just slightly, and Minhyun sees the same wonder he feels reflected in Seongwoo’s eyes.

        He cocks his head. “This should work. I hope it does, at least.”

        _I hope it doesn’t,_ he thinks, before taking the vial and starting home.

 

…

 

        Minhyun comes over every evening after that. At a quarter after five, there’s a knock; never before, and never after. He always brings something with him, and it speaks louder than any greeting he could possibly offer. Mostly it’s food, soft halves of muffins and bags of berries. Sometimes it’s dog-eared books, hasty sketches with coffee stains. Seongwoo doesn’t know where he gets them, but thinks that if he asks, they’ll stop. So he never does.

        And the potions never work. Seongwoo’s getting better at making them, because it’s practically _all_ he does, but even plain, grueling hard work gets him nowhere. He thinks he’s made every potion in all of his grandmother’s books—thinks he’s made some in borrowed ones she never gave back. He still gives them to Minhyun, because he needs a reason to leave and a reason to come again and Seongwoo is too self centered to tell him the truth.

        “I don’t know why he’s still coming,” he confesses to Daniel one night, after Minhyun’s left. He locks the door and the windows before he calls him, because—even though he suspects that Minhyun suspects the truth—it’s one thing for them both to know that they’re getting nowhere, and quite another to say it out loud after he’s gone, all bold letters and harsh truths. “They’re not even potions for the voice now. I gave him one that helps with virility today.”

        “Maybe your subconscious is trying to tell you something?” Daniel’s voice is uneven; he’s probably hanging over the side of the bed. He’s the only one of his friends that Seongwoo’s tentatively told about the family business—his grandmother helped him with a tiny curse when they were younger, when they’d had softer minds. The rest would probably set up an appointment with a grief counselor they knew tangentially.

        “I don’t want to get into his pants,” Seongwoo says, clearing up his coffee table. It’s a force of nature, really. He cleans it up every night, so it looks presentable when Minhyun comes over and, somehow, it’s twice as messy by five the next day.

        “You’re lying.”

        “I’m not.” It’s not _strictly_ a lie. Seongwoo is a very multifaceted man, with a variety of desires that he wants to explore. His immediate desires, though, are more of the romantic sort. Of the impossible sort.

        “Listen,” Daniel says, shifting on the bed. There’s a purring sound in the background, and Seongwoo, for a brief, terrible moment, thinks about adopting a cat. He really is disgustingly lonely. “He’s probably caught onto the fact that you’re not giving him the same kind of potions. You said he’s been through the circuit. I’m not saying he could make _you_ something, but if he’s been taking the same kind of shit for years, he can probably tell when he is no longer receiving that shit. Just brain food. Throwing that out there.”

        Seongwoo closes his eyes, manages to find words in midst of his humiliation. “That’s unlikely.”

        “It’s really not.”

        He doesn’t respond for a moment, and Daniel sighs on the other side, crackly. It mixes with the purring. Seongwoo pokes at one of his old stuffed animals under the couch and wonders whether it’d make a good substitute.

        “He’s still coming back,” Daniel continues. “You know that. I know that. Can we agree on that?”

        Seongwoo frowns. “Yeah.”

        “Yeah, well, he’s coming back for _something._ And, argue with me all you want, but your potions fucking suck. He probably knows that better than me. Connect the dots, dude. Please connect them.”

        This time, he sighs. “It’s still unlikely.” And it is—despite Daniel’s crazy ideas otherwise, it really is. But the idea is something worth holding onto, something that Seongwoo keeps with him even after he ends the call and pours himself a bowl of stale Froot Loops. It’s something.

 

…

 

        Minhyun spends more time at Seongwoo’s cramped, beautiful apartment than he’d like to admit. To himself; to his friends. Jisung invites him out on Tuesday evening, and he turns him down again.

        He raises his eyebrows. “Where have you been running off to after work lately? It’s like staying here a moment after five physically pains you. And trust me, I’ve seen physical pain.” Then he goes on to detail Sungwoon’s indigestion from the week before, and Minhyun’s off the hook. For now.

        It’s not precisely that it pains him—it’s more a tether, a gentle tug in a direction that is not home but is somehow close enough. The heavy smell of incense and earth calms him in a strange, heedless way, almost as powerful as cigarette smoke.

        He pushes it away on the walk over. He’s reading too far into it, psychoanalyzing himself when there’s nothing left to see. If there was any part of him that longed for permanence, his mother’s death burned that out. He’s just desperate to be rid of the curse, probably.

        When he knocks on the door, something crashes to the floor inside and Seongwoo yells unintelligibly and even that loosens the knot in his chest. The door swings open and he’s standing there, frazzled and disheveled and with some unknown herb smeared across his left cheekbone and all Minhyun can think is, _Well, fuck._

“Hey,” Seongwoo coughs into an elbow and runs a hand through his hair. The lock on his left side momentarily flattens against his scalp and then pokes out again. Minhyun tucks his fingers into the pockets of his coat. “What’s up? Sorry for the mess, I was trying something. In my defense, it looked promising.”

        Minhyun cocks his head, delivers a look that hopefully says, _They always do._

        Seongwoo snorts, and ducks his head, shifting to the side in a single fluid movement. Minhyun slips into the house, places a sack of caramel apple lollipops on the still cluttered coffee table. He doesn’t understand how it’s always messy. He wonders if it’s enchanted. That would explain a lot.

        “You’re quiet today,” Seongwoo jokes, carting away something or another to another side of the room. It reminds Minhyun of a bird flitting around, pressing itself against the sides of a cage and then back across.

        He rolls his eyes and, unthinking, signs, _I’m tired._

“I have some blankets laying around if you want them,” he replies back, just as Minhyun scrabbles for his board inside his coat.

        Seongwoo stills—he stills in the same way, and he wonders whether it is still called muscle memory when you learn it from another’s body.

        He doesn’t dare to move—if he moves, it will come apart, and he doesn’t think he understands enough of this to cope with that happening. But finally, he blows out a breath, and even that tastes of song in his mouth before he lets it go. Slowly, carefully, he signs, _Can you understand me?_

Seongwoo blinks at him, clearly confused. He bites back a smile and pulls out his board, copies down the same question and turns it to face him. A blush spreads across his face, from ear to ear. He looks anywhere but Minhyun, but Minhyun still looks at him, because there is something about his face that demands attention. He thinks that maybe he knows now how all those failed, hexed suitors felt. Greek gods, Greek heroes—it is not hard to imagine playing with impossibilities for the sake of that face.

        “I’m—I’m still learning, really,” he mutters under his breath. “I’m terrible at it, I just picked up a few words, I was _hoping_ I would know something substantial before I told you. This is embarrassing. Can we forget this just happened?”

        Minhyun doesn’t really think they can. _Why did you learn it?_

Seongwoo frowns at him, and it’s not playful but it’s not angry either. Flustered, maybe. Minhyun thinks that he looks quite nice flustered. His hair sticks out a little extra to compensate. “For you, obviously.”

        He knows he’s staring at this point, but he can’t bring himself to stop. _For you._ Something bright and jagged and full of light blooms into life between his ribs, and it’s just a shadow of what Seongwoo holds in his palm, but it feels like so much, like _too_ much. His fingers shake against the board, and he stills himself by clenching them around the pen.

“I have some, uh, leftover pastries in the kitchen, if you want them,” Seongwoo says finally. “I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, but I know you like those chocolate croissants so—"

        _Well, fuck._

        Minhyun nods emphatically, and he laughs, eyes crinkling at the corners. He follows him into the kitchen and swallows his own regret. It comes easy.

        Seongwoo retrieves an oil stained sack from the pantry and nods up towards the ceiling, towards the roof. “Let’s get some fresh air. It still smells like burning herbs in here.”

        _I don’t mind it._ He doesn’t, really. It reminds him too much of Seongwoo, acrid smoke twisted into something that resembles a home.

        He looks at him strangely, searching, and then smiles. “Well, I’m tired of it. You’d think there’d be a spell to clear the air or something, but. It’s poor planning.”

        So they climb up a rickety staircase that loses structural integrity as they get closer to the roof. Minhyun toes rotting wood and breathes it in, a mildewed, rough odor that hangs in the air.

        Seongwoo brushes dust from a portion of the cement and drops the pastries beside him before taking a seat. It’s not a terrible view—all city, all skyscrapers and silver and black, but in an almost beautiful way. The sky is a smooth gray, pale and bright above them.

        Minhyun starts eating the croissants, partially out of hunger and partially because it’s the simplest way to avoid a conversation of any kind. They don’t do this, not really. Minhyun comes over and drops something new on a stained dinner table, and Seongwoo changes nothing into something, even when that something is not necessarily what Minhyun needs, and then they smile at each other and pretend that progress has been made and watch the same late night talk shows in different places. This isn’t what they do, and it’s not really something they _can_ do, but Minhyun wants to do it anyway. He wonders if this is _living._ It’s slower than he’d expected.

        “I’m thinking of selling the business,” Seongwoo says, and from the foreign timbre of his voice, from the hesitant angles of his face, he can tell that he hadn’t really meant to say that. Surprise shapes his features, and Minhyun turns away to take another bite of croissant.

        He wipes his hands on his jeans and pulls out his board. _Why?_

Seongwoo looks away, then, glances around the city like it’s an explanation. They are cut from different pieces of cloth, and this feels telling, somehow. “I don’t know. It hurts, I think. Staying there alone. It’s always meant to have held two, and I can feel that.” He shoots him a sideways look, wry humor carefully held up over pain. “You’re going to say something about how it’s cramped enough with me alone.”

        He’s meant to write, _Guilty as charged._ He’s meant to write, _You’re shit at witchcraft anyway._ He writes, _My mother died two years ago. Lung cancer._

Seongwoo blinks at him, caught off guard. He composes himself, slowly, and then says, “From the smoking?”

        Minhyun raises an eyebrow at him, and he doesn’t laugh, but smiles a little, off to the side. “Yeah, I know I’m stupid.”

        He hesitates. Seongwoo’s not looking at him anymore, gaze thrown over the city, croissant crumbs around his chin. He has no obligation to do anything past this—he’s not obligated to do most of the things he does for Seongwoo, he thinks. It’s a reprimand, supposed to be one, but it gives him the courage to go through with it. Even while he’s writing, he thinks that courage feels an awful lot like stupidity.

        Seongwoo glances over, reads the board with characteristic focus. _I think that she tried to make herself unlovable. Tried to make it so that no one cared for her, or wanted to, so she could get away with blaming herself for more than she should’ve._

At this point, he isn’t entirely sure why he’s telling Seongwoo this. It could be a cautionary tale—it could be a confession, drawn out of him slow, painful, in ragged bursts. But he writes with a desperation that feels, looks, foreign even as he watches himself move.

        The other man purses his lips after he finishes. “You’re not going to like what I’m going to say.”

        Minhyun doesn’t write anything, just stares. Waits. He sighs, and says, “She sounds like you.” And his expression must truly be something unimaginable, because he adds, “Your curse isn’t you. Your voice isn’t you. You’re just Minhyun. Sometimes, I don’t think you see that.”

        He regrets beginning this discussion immensely. Minhyun stuffs an entire croissant in his mouth to avoid replying. Finally, he swallows, and writes carefully, _You should stay._

Seongwoo looks at him for a moment, and there is something familiar and foreign in his gaze. It’s brief, complex in ways that Minhyun doesn’t think he’s qualified to try to understand. But he can understand himself, for once, and that tugging dread that’s lurked the past couple of weeks, cloaked like warmth and barbed all over, seems impossibly true and impossibly terrible.

        He gets up quickly, and crumbs fall to the ground. Seongwoo looks up at him, curious but silent. He closes his eyes. If only he could say it. If only they made words for this; if only he knew them; if only he could form them into something soft and real and natural.

        “Are you going home?” Seongwoo asks tentatively. He’s twisting the bag of pastries with one hand and brushing the crumbs away with the other. Movement—he is a study in movement. Minhyun is hyper aware of his own inertia.

        He nods, and it feels like a miracle. The other man holds his gaze for a second more, but the curiosity fades, like all curiosity does, and he tilts his head in acquiescence. Minhyun nods again, and climbs down the mildewed, dying stairs, and walks home, and lights old, gifted bundles of herbs on fire until the room smells of life and death and smoke and the fire alarm goes off and he is kicked out, temporarily. It rains, that night, and even after they let him back in, he stays just outside his room and waits for the water to wash the smoke from his skin.  

 

…

 

        Daniel thinks it’s creepy to analyze someone else’s smile. To be fair, there _are_ things that would make it creepy—taking secret candid photos, paying artists to recreate it. Really, Seongwoo thinks he’s on the well adjusted side of the spectrum.

        The day Minhyun asks Seongwoo out—Daniel says that _probably_ wasn’t a date either, and he’s just being delusional, but at this point he feels he deserves the right to hold onto his delusions—he’s smiling. He lingers at the door even after Seongwoo paints his skin with ink and hands him two pastes to rub on his throat before bed. He pretends he’s not there, at first, gives Minhyun the chance to disappear and not risk staying for another rant about the ethics of witchcraft. But he does stay, and anticipation and frustration war in his chest as he walks over.

        “What’s up?” he asks weakly.

        Minhyun smiles. There’s no way to prepare yourself for it, sharp and purposeful and clear and _unreadable._ It’s not worth the attempt, when he’ll say yes to whatever he requests anyway. But the loss of it feels significant. He signs, _Come to the coffee shop at the corner of Second and Holly tomorrow. At seven._

Seongwoo understands all of it, which should be cause for celebration. But curiosity wins over. “Why?”

        But Minhyun just smiles that illegal smile again, and waves. He shuts the door behind him, and it is only when smoke drifts towards him from the kitchen that he realizes that his dinner is already a lost cause, and only when he throws it in the trash and eats takeout pizza with an old romcom that he realizes that maybe it always was.

        He leaves early the next day. Minhyun had said to be there at seven, but he can’t sleep all night and wakes up at two and then falls asleep at four and wakes up at four thirty and decides that enough is enough. Dressing is an entirely different issue—he calls Daniel and keeps him on speaker for five minutes straight, lets him listen to the quiet silence in the apartment before he ends the call and drives over.

        “Did he say why?” Daniel asks, toeing at piles of dirty laundry beside his stripped mattress.

        “No,” he moans into his pillow. “It’s killing me. Does he want to go steady? Is he getting me a job? Is he going to kill me where everyone else is too stressed and caffeinated to notice?”

        Daniel looks at him, and then hands him Peter. “Take deep breaths.”

        Seongwoo feels like the role reversal here is several shades of ironic, but does what he says and holds the cat to his chest. After he gets dressed in the cleanest clothes that he owns—which, according to Daniel, are still completely terrible—he’s poked out the door, sans cat.

        “I need moral support,” he begs. “Peter is the best kind of moral support. She doesn’t make comments about my wardrobe or career.”

        Peter meows at him, as if to say, _You don’t know me._ Daniel shrugs in agreement, before fixing him with a serious look. “If it goes downhill, you have my number. You have the bathroom. If it’s _really_ bad, just run to the pharmacy and Sungwoon will hide you in the backroom while his parents aren’t looking.”

        “Okay,” he says, and says it again for good measure, rubs his eyes like he can rub out his own indecision. “Okay.”

        “Go get ‘em, tiger,” Daniel says, which is the opposite of encouraging, but Seongwoo is too choked up to really complain. He walks to the coffee shop, a solid one and a half hours early, and sits between two snoring teenagers in a vain attempt to disguise himself.

        It’s attractive, but sharp edged and utilitarian in a way that completely, cleanly contrasts with the faux quaint chaos of Seongwoo’s apartment. And that contrast reminds him a little of Minhyun too, and it’s so, _so_ unbearable. Next, he’ll be seeing him in coffee grounds.

        Not surprisingly, he falls asleep at half past six, and wakes up seconds before seven. Minhyun is still nowhere to be seen, but he refuses to take another chance and orders himself coffee. It tastes loveless, if that’s even viable as a taste.

        Someone clears their throat at the front of the room, and he looks up, and nearly drops his scalding hot coffee all over himself and the still sleeping teenagers. He just barely catches it—the warmth is still present around his fingers, an ineffective reminder of his own consciousness.

        It’s Minhyun, which isn’t the surprising part. He’s holding a microphone with one hand and has his other loosely rested on the stand, which is. Seongwoo almost drops the coffee again; he rests it on the table between himself and Sleep Deprived Adolescent #1.

        Minhyun glances over at him, and there’s something foreign, almost indiscernible in the fluorescent light washed across his skin. It’s nerves, he realizes, and if he’d still been holding his coffee, this would’ve been the time he would’ve finally spilled it. Reticence twisted with youth—it looks wrong on Minhyun’s face, but Seongwoo can’t tear his eyes away, because—like everything else—it looks beautiful on him. In this light, the uncertainty is striking. Seongwoo closes his eyes, and when he opens them, there’s someone else at the mic.

        In theory, he knows that he was introduced by a friend of his. He knows that, presumably, things happened before and after the performance. But in the moment, in every moment after, all he knows is this: that Minhyun’s mother hadn’t lied.

        After, Minhyun catches him before he leaves, which is an impressive feat on the other man’s part. Seongwoo’s mind is full of light and love, and he doesn’t trust himself to stay still long enough without doing something he’ll regret.

        He signs, _Did you like it?_

Seongwoo thinks, _I am in love with your voice, and I am in love with you, and I am in love with your curse if only because it holds a fraction of you in it, and that is something I will never be able to do._ He says, “I really, really did.”

        And Minhyun smiles, not a Mona Lisa smile, but something bright and wide and incongruous with the darkening night. It’s joyful in a simple way, and Seongwoo almost can’t breathe.

        _If you love something, set it free._ If Seongwoo knew how, he thinks he would—hopes he would. But it’s moments like this that make him think that if he knew how to cure Minhyun, he’d light the spell on fire and scatter the ashes across the world, farther than the heavens could reach, just so that he’d stay.

 

…

 

        Seongwoo finds the cure to Minhyun’s curse when he’s not really looking for it, which honestly feels like an insult to the several hours he _had_ spent looking for it.

        It’s nearly four in the morning, and he’s shuffling through a pile of spells he’d printed from one of his grandmother’s friends, so he can deliver them by hand to another one of his grandmother’s friends. It’s not labeled at all—he almost misses it, hands shaking from sleep deprivation. But his eyes catch on the word _song,_ scrawled in the corner of the paper, because it’s a word that rolls through his mind, unbidden, frequent enough that he can recognize it even now.

        He forces himself to stop shaking, smooths down the rest of the papers and places them on top of an old, coffee stained roll of newspapers. He snaps his fingers to turn on the lights—it doesn’t work, even after three tries, because he’s shaking too hard for there to be any kind of friction, any kind of sound. So he turns the lamp on himself.

        _For a voice lost to spite._ His heart is suddenly too loud, this room too small. He reads the description, cure, side effects carefully. It’s not particularly hard, it seems—common ingredients taken together in a relatively uncommon combination. Then he reads the last ingredient, parallel with the last step of the execution.

        _True love’s kiss._

Seongwoo wants to cry. He imagines having the conversation with Minhyun— _I know how to cure you! You just have to find your soulmate. Piece of cake, right?_

It hurts, to know that even now, even after he’s learned everything he can, even when he _has_ the spell, there is only so much he can do. There is only so much time for them to pretend that what they have is something more than it really is.

        But it’s not impossible. He could sign him for Grindr. It could work.

        He makes the rest of the cure early the next day, a potion that’s frankly rudimentary compared to some of the failed attempts he’s handed Minhyun. He comes late too, at half past five. And it shouldn’t bother him—it _doesn’t—_ but it feels, for a moment, like there’s an omen in that too.

        He nods at the potion. Seongwoo coughs, picks at a thread on his sweater. He puts the vial down on the table and picks it up again, goes to open the curtains and clears up the couch before he finally stills. He wondered, a couple times, how hard it would be to keep the cure from Minhyun if he knew it. Nothing like this—he couldn’t have fathomed this.

        _Is something wrong?_ Seongwoo wants to laugh. There’s too much wrong, there’s always been too much wrong, and yet, now, when there’s hope on the horizon, it feels worse than ever.

        He holds the vial out and shrugs. “I found the instructions for this in an, uh, old file. I think it’s worth a try.”

        Seongwoo knows it won’t work without the kiss, knows it won’t activate until then. But he satisfies himself with the way Minhyun brightens, just a little. He always does that, even when he gives him hand cream for liver health. His chest constricts slightly.

        _Thank you,_ he signs, and then hesitates. _Are you sure you’re alright?_

He doesn’t blame Minhyun for worrying. In the ten minutes he’s spent in the apartment, Seongwoo’s stacked and unstacked papers, pulled burnt platters out from the oven, shoved uncooked ones in, smacked himself in the cheek with a light fixture, and torn two curtains. It’s not his best day, he’ll admit.

        He shakes his head. “I’m fine.”

        Minhyun cocks his head, pulls himself to his feet. He’s nearly at the door when Seongwoo calls for him to stop, and he does so quickly it’s almost impossible not to believe that he’d been waiting for it.

        “Are you, um,” he starts, leaning against the couch. He closes his eyes; when he opens them, Minhyun is waiting, expression unreadable. “Are you dating someone?”

        His features shift imperceptibly, lips quirked up to the right. He shakes his head, and Seongwoo exhales in relief, even though he shouldn’t. He really shouldn’t. He’s a terrible friend, and a terrible person, and a terrible witch, and he is still so fucking _relieved._

Minhyun is still waiting, and this feels significant somehow. Seongwoo says, “You should, uh, date someone. Like, I could sign you up for a dating site. My friend knows someone who helped do customer service for one, so like. There should be a discount. I think. It won’t be a lot, but, um, yeah. Taking advantage of youth, and all.”

        And this is so completely the wrong thing to say—he knows it even before he finishes speaking, not just from his own heart, but from Minhyun’s expression. Because he’s not smiling a smooth, taciturn smile. He’s not smiling at all. It is only now, when every last trace of humor has been wiped from his face, that Seongwoo realizes how he took it all for granted. The faint hint of fondness on Minhyun’s face when he spilled something toxic on the hardwood—the endeared irritation after another failed trial.

        Seongwoo has never associated the other man with movement, and that too feels endlessly stupid now. Minhyun places the vial on the table and pulls his coat around him in two quick motions, runs a hand through his air. It only serves to make it messier, and it hangs over his eyes when he looks up, cuts his expression into separate shards of anger—of betrayal.

        His hands are a blur of movement—Seongwoo can barely follow him, misses half the signs, and he doesn’t think the other man cares in the least. He’s trembling, slightly, and even now, Seongwoo has to tamp down the urge to cross the room and ground him. Dreams never die, it seems, even when you poison them with human error.

        _You don’t have to fix my life,_ he signs. _I’m not lonely. I have friends. I have family. I have basic dignity. I don’t need to meet someone to fill the hole my mother left. And even if I was lonely. Even if I should use my youth. The curse won’t just go away. Do you think anyone is going to stay if I tell them the truth? Do you think I’ll be able to stay with someone long enough without slipping up?_

For once, Seongwoo is speechless. He can’t follow him at all, but the meaning is clear—words fill in the gaps where Seongwoo is unable to understand him. With every motion, the anger seems to drain out of Minhyun, until finally his hands move to his sides. But they are still shaking—it’s impossible to forget that. When Seongwoo closes his eyes, he sees them trembling, filled with an anger that is impossible to verbalize.

        He opens them, and Minhyun draws his hands up again. _I asked you for a cure to my curse. Not this._

And then he draws the vial off the table and slides it in his coat and leaves, slamming the door behind him. Seongwoo has never seen that door waver, even under the weight of fire and acids and questionable substances. But today, it shakes too.

 

…

 

        Seongwoo doesn’t sleep a lot after that. He closes his eyes, and sees shaking hands; shaking eyes; a shaking heart, and that, only that, does not belong to Minhyun.

        Daniel comes over and tries to drag him out of bed, which fails. He doesn’t actually have a substantial reason to get out of bed—Minhyun accounts for ninety percent of his business, and the other ten percent stop by bimonthly.

        “You can’t stay in bed forever,” Daniel says on Thursday. He’s brought all three of his cats, in some kind of attempt to cuddle Seongwoo into being a functional human being.

        “I can try,” he mutters, and pulls the blankets further over his head. He can’t be tempted by the cats if he can’t see them.

        He can tell when Daniel gives up, because his shadow moves behind the blankets and he sighs deeply before placing the cats on a chair. Seongwoo’s fairly sure it’s a chair, but it’s entirely possible that it’s really just an enormous pile of dirty laundry.

        “Okay,” he says. “Let’s make a deal.”

        Seongwoo pulls the blankets down slightly, just enough that he can see his friend. “What kind of deal?”

        Encouraged, Daniel grins. It is, in Seongwoo’s defense, not a very threatening grin. “I’ll let you waffle around for two more days. And then, on Saturday night, come with me to Sungwoon’s party.”

        “What! No,” Seongwoo says, and if his voice comes out a little squeakier than usual, Daniel doesn’t comment on it, bless his heart. “Why would I do that? List three reasons why I would even do that.”

        Daniel counts them off on his fingers. “One, free food. I just checked your fridge, and everything in there is expired. Two, you need social interaction. I think you’re going to, like, rot away if you say in here any longer. Three, Minhyun won’t be there. It’s Minhyun Free. Here, everything’s going to remind you of him. You’ll just moan and groan and tell Squiggles the Teddy Bear that that corner between the leftover pizza and water bills is where he used to sit when you tried to burn that curse out of him. It’ll be a mess.”

        Daniel is not lying, and Seongwoo knows this, but he is also a very immature twenty-four-year-old man, and Daniel knows this. So he says, “Sure,” and both of them still know that Daniel will possibly have to drag him out by his heels on Saturday, which is, unsurprisingly, exactly what happens.

        “This is assault,” he shouts, as they move down the staircase slowly. “You’re assaulting me! Officer! Guard!”

        “A perk of living in this hellhole,” Daniel says as they reach the first landing, “Is that there is no one here to hear you scream. Do you want to get coffee on the way?”

        They do get coffee, at the shop at the corner of Second and Holly. Seongwoo drinks his loveless coffee too quickly and it burns his tongue, and everything about that feels fitting, even the way it settles thick at the pit of his stomach.

        When they get there, Sungwoon opens the door and kisses Daniel on the cheek and hands Seongwoo a colorful book on surviving puberty. They’re relatively late— _fashionably_ late, according to Daniel—and Seongwoo is both comforted and intimidated by the amount of people already there. On one hand, he doesn’t have to make small talk with the host, because Sungwoon is too busy cleaning up spills and vomit. On the other hand, the air reeks of perfume and alcohol and there are, impossibly, downsides to not eating anything but expired ice cream for five days straight.

        He attempts a beer, and abandons it on the kitchen counter. He attempts a can filled with amazing, delicious liquid and a name that he can’t pronounce, much less recognize, and finds it much more his taste. So he drinks a couple, and then a couple more. And he doesn’t know where Daniel is, but suspects he’s catching up with Sungwoon in one of the bedrooms. Intimately. Catching up intimately. His brain provides an image of Minhyun, bright eyed and nearly laughing, and he closes his eyes, and sees hands. His head hurts.

        Seongwoo stumbles out of the kitchen and—presumably—out of the living room, and out onto the balcony. He notices every moment as it spins by, but they float out of reach too quickly for them to hold on, and he’s getting a bit angry about that. He just wants a second to hold them—to be aware of himself, to know how to say the right thing and be the right person and notice the right things about the world around him. And suddenly, it’s impossible for him to know whether this muted anger, every emotion he’s ever felt dragged through amber, is from the alcohol at all.

        When he gets to the balcony, the first thing he does is breathe. He loves air—clean, beautiful, crisp night air. The moon waves at him. He waves back.

        The second thing he does is scream. It’s not really a scream—more an overgrown yelp. He’s not entirely sure of his sense of volume at the moment.

        Minhyun’s leaned against the other side of the balcony, equally shocked but a lot less drunk. His eyes are wide, skin paling with every moment that ticks by, and even now, Seongwoo thinks, _You are beautiful._

Minhyun’s eyes widen further, and it is possible that he hadn’t thought it—that he’d spoken it. But it was quiet, must’ve been, because his expression is thick with confusion and not disgust.

        “Hi,” he says, and leans against the railing of the balcony. But he’s terrible with depth, even more terrible now, and nearly falls—his elbow wavers in the air a couple inches from the side of the railing. Minhyun crosses the space and takes it in one hand, stills him and keeps him upright. They are close, too close, and the air smells of cigarette smoke and alcohol and something sharper than rainwater.

        Seongwoo steadies himself with his other hand, and Minhyun lets go, takes a step back. His expression is unreadable, but even now, clouded by his own anger and far too much of that wonderful drink, Seongwoo can tell that he’s troubled. Upset. And that hurts too, because—even now—he’s pretty sure that it has to do with him.

        “I’m sorry,” he says, and he’s not really sure what he’s apologizing for, because when he looks back, his brain is a huge abyss. He remembers cats. “I’m really sorry.”

        Minhyun stares at him, and waits. He’s always waiting, and Seongwoo never knows what to say to make him stay—and he waits, even then.

        Memories align—he’s not sure whether it’s the night air or Minhyun or the fact that he drank two water bottles before stumbling out here, but things are beginning to focus. Embarrassment burns through him, pitiless.

        “I’m sorry for—insinuating that you needed a significant other,” he says, and it’s slurring a little less, which is a good sign. “I didn’t mean it like that. I really didn’t. I don’t know why I said it.” He does. “I was just. Making a fool of myself. Like usual.”

        Minhyun considers him, and yet he himself is inscrutable, and it’s hopelessly unfair, but even that feels comforting now. Finally, he signs, _I’m sorry. I overreacted. I know you didn’t mean it like that. I was just upset._

Seongwoo waits for him to elaborate, but he doesn’t, just turns towards the city and leans his arms over the railing. He scans the world with an uncharacteristic pain, thin and jagged and not easily described. Seongwoo joins him, crosses his arms and places them on the cold metal. But they are close enough that he can feel Minhyun’s warmth.

        “I’m not selling the apartment,” he says, and that is _definitely_ not what he’d meant to say. Minhyun glances over sharply, expression equal parts shock and relief. He bites his lip and continues, “It didn’t feel right. Like, theoretically, it sounds like a cure all, right? But I thought about it—really thought about it. I don’t think I could bear it, leaving. It’s a shitty home, and a shitty business, but it’s ours. Was ours.”

        The sharp, bright angles of his expression have smoothed out once again. A shadow of fear, of anticipation, of yearning, flattens itself against Seongwoo’s ribcage and wants, wants until every breath he’s ever held is drawn out of him and into the cold night air. He closes his eyes, and sees still hands, quiet hands, and opens them to still eyes, quiet ones.

        He runs his hand through his hair, suddenly self-conscious, turns to look at the city just so that he doesn’t have to look at Minhyun, face the repercussions of his own stupidity over and over with such acute shame. But before he can, Minhyun reaches out, a sudden, rare act, and tucks a lock of hair behind his ear. His eyes are half closed, lips parted, and it occurs to Seongwoo that he’s not entirely here either.

        He opens his eyes, and surprise colors his face. And then Seongwoo kisses him.

        It’s not his best kiss, not their best kiss by far. It’s too quick, too rushed, and Minhyun is stiff against him for God knows how long. And then he kisses back, and Seongwoo has never been this aware of himself before, has never felt his own humanity with this kind of painful clarity.

        They pull apart, finally, and everything is nascent now—the night swirls and changes around them and within them. Minhyun whispers, voice hoarse from disuse and barely audible, “Seongwoo.”

        He steps back, and Seongwoo steps back too, for entirely different reasons. Shock, brighter than before, flashes across his face, and confusion, embarrassment, and bewilderment quickly follow.

        Seongwoo’s mind is a cesspool. The distribution is roughly half _‘HE KISSED ME WITH HIS MOUTH’_ , a third ‘ _AM I HIS TRUE LOVE’,_ and a fifth ‘ _HE HAS SUCH A NICE VOICE HE SHOULD NARRATE AUDIO BOOKS FOR SMALL CHILDREN.’_ He stares and stares and stares, and wonders—in the midst of the rest of the more tiring yelling—whether he would mind kissing again.

        Minhyun says, “What the _fuck?”_

        At the same time, Seongwoo says, “I’m your _true love?”_

Both of these questions elicit similar reactions—Minhyun turns the color of a beetroot and Seongwoo considers alternate escape routes from the balcony that don’t necessarily lead to ER trips.

        (He really does have such a nice voice. Seongwoo’s only heard him say four words and he’s already ready to pay money to get him a spot narrating one of those nature documentaries, the ones on rare, endangered species with ridiculous mating patterns. It’s a calming voice—not necessarily _that_ calming when he’s swearing at Seongwoo, but he has a reasonably large imagination—and lower than he’d expected, considering his singing voice, and kind of sweet. Like honey. Like if honey was poured down a stream of melted chocolate and into a vat of caramel that lived in an alternative universe where everything was made out of marshmallows. Seongwoo’s fairly sure he’s still drunk.)

        Minhyun gets over his redness first. “What do you mean by that?”

        Seongwoo doesn’t answer at first because _wow._ That is a _voice._ Minhyun touches his arm slightly, which, in all honesty, is not helping, like, at all. But he forces himself to say, slow as it is, “The potion that I gave you today.”

        “Yes?”

        “It’s the cure. To your curse.”

        Minhyun blinks at him. “But I, uh, checked. I was still speaking song until… now. Until the kiss.”

        “Well,” he says. “Well.”

        “Well?” Minhyun’s voice is cute even when he is agitated. Seongwoo files this piece of information away for a rainy day and watches the tips of the other man’s ears burn red.

        “There was a last ingredient. Step, if you will,” he says, and his voice is not _nearly_ as attractive as Minhyun’s. It’s still slurring and kind of squeaky and also hoarse from sleep. “True love’s kiss. Which. Was why I said all those stupid things. I was, like, trying to be a wingman, I think? Because I wasn’t entirely sure how I was going to get you a true love. Like, there’s no manual for that. Is there True Love eBay?”

        Minhyun is getting redder, again, which has to be all kinds of bad for his health. “You mean. You could’ve told me that was the last step. But you didn’t?”

        “Yes,” he says, but it comes out like _Yeeees?,_ and then he presses himself against the railing and Minhyun steps out and steadies him but does not let go.

        “Okay,” he says, and he’s getting redder, but his voice—his beautiful, nature documentary narrator voice—is quieting. “Okay. I’m in love with you.”

        “Swiper, no lying,” he says, which is _really_ not the right phrase. He’s not sure whether it’s the alcohol, really, since that’s begun to fade. It might be a defense mechanism. “Liper, no swiping.”

        Minhyun stares at him in confusion for a few more seconds, and then appears to give up. “If I wasn’t in love with you, then how did the kiss work?”

        “Magic,” he says. “The laws of the universe are a bendy straw, and also I really, really like you, so maybe they were just, like, being nice?”

        He’s smiling, a shadow of one of his wider smiles, close lipped but dazzling even now. “You’re so stupid. God, I’ve been waiting so long to say that out loud.”

        _“Hey,”_ he says, offended. “You love me.”

        “I do,” Minhyun affirms, and Seongwoo nearly swoons.

        “I love you too,” he says, and it comes out steady, quiet. “I’m sorry for being really stupid. You have a really nice voice.”

        “It’s okay,” Minhyun replies. “I do?”

        “Yes,” Seongwoo says, and then explains his plan to get Minhyun a steady job on Animal Planet. “You’re laughing at me.”

        “I’m not,” he says, in between peals of laughter, but Seongwoo can’t fault him, because _God._ That is a _laugh._ His expression sobers impossibly quick, and he pales. “Seongwoo. What about _everyone in that room who doesn’t think I can speak? What about everyone in my life?”_

Seongwoo places a hand on his shoulder, like he’s always wanted to do, and Minhyun relaxes, barely. “I know spells to make them forget. I think I must know every single kind of magic in the world by now, searching for that damn cure.”

        “That’s impossible.”

        “Okay,” he says, and smiles. “Close to every single kind, then. Enough to make them think you’ve always had this voice. Technically, we’re not lying, because you have.”

        Minhyun closes his eyes, and takes a deep rattling breath. He opens them, and glances up at the sky. It’s a brief glance, and it carelessly scrapes across the stars and the moon and the metal and stone world around them. And then he returns his gaze to Seongwoo’s face and lingers, uncertainty and youth hiding in his features, and he is still, but it is the stillness not of a carved, marble statue, but of a tidal wave about to crash.

        “Can I kiss you again?” he asks.

        Seongwoo grins. “I thought you’d never ask.”       

 

…

 

        Animal Planet never calls them back. Nat Geo Wild does. The moment he ends the call, Seongwoo turns to Minhyun—who is _lying_ on _his sofa_ which belongs to _them—_ and says, “The universe is so fucking weird.”

        And Minhyun smiles. “It’s good that it likes us so much, then."

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!! ik this is a bit of a goofy work but fingers crossed that if ur here (at the end) u enjoyed it!! leave a comment/kudos if u want to :)


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